That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms, many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet.

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump.”

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

Needless to say, if Hooverâ€™s conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Hereâ€™s to hoping that heâ€™s right.

That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms, many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet.

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump.”

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

Needless to say, if Hooverâ€™s conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Hereâ€™s to hoping that heâ€™s right.

This is exactly what I was talking about when I said I believe there could be alien bacterias.

The Bible does speak of UFOs and Aliens. The Bible mentions the Nephlem or offspring of Fallen Angles. Also if you look in the Book of Enoch which was conviently left out of the Holy Bible most of us have seen. The Book of Enoch talks of UFOs being seen and other Angelic Beings doing their roles. The King James Bible is not complete knowing that the Book of Enoch was left out. Another Bible discoverd in 1946–47. Whether we believe in a God or multiple Gods should not keep everyone from using the Bible as a guide. Many Prophecies have came straight from the Bible years before Nostradamas or Edger Cayce. I have no problem with Aliens. Some are fallen angles and I believe some are here for a purpose.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/-UHK2Tfqe4Q[/youtube]

Both videos mention the Bible. The reason many have not been taught this is because the Book of Enoch was witheld from us. Gen. chapter six mentioned the Nephiliam. Those were the Giants we see in pics today. The Bible holds alot of secrets even if you dont believe in Jesus or God. Someone with knowledge wrote the Bible to be used as a guide. If you notice alot of events are happening more and more such as floods and earthquakes. Be good and dont be decieved. \

In what’s being called a groundbreaking paper that could ignite more debate over the creation of life, an award-winning NASA scientist is suggesting that we are not alone in the universe — and, in fact, life on Earth may have come from somewhere out of this world.

After probing an extremely rare class of meteorite called the CI1 carbonaceous meteorite — of which only nine are known to exist on our planet, including one found near Revelstoke, B.C. — Richard Hoover found “indigenous fossils” of bacterial life within the masses.

The findings, published in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology, suggest that life on the meteorites existed, and even grew, on the masses before they entered the Earth’s atmosphere, meaning the creation of life is possible in the icy reaches of outer space.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com.

Hoover, who has spent more than a decade travelling to remote areas around the world to study meteorites, said an analysis of “freshly fractured” pieces of the meteorite revealed microfossils, some of which were not so different than those found on Earth.

A summary of the lengthy study — written by the journal itself — says Hoover “concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, (such as) comets, moons, and other astral bodies.”

But, more shockingly, the journal notes that “the implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.”

As a result of the “controversial nature” of the claim, the publication has extended an open call to more than 5,000 scientists, inviting them to critique the study. Those reactions — “both pro and con” — will be published alongside the paper in the coming weeks.

“This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible,” Hoover told FoxNews.com.

Hoover was the 2009 recipient of the Gold Medal of SPIE, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, for his work in X-ray and extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, optics, ranging from microscopes to telescopes.

mhusser@postmedia.com

NASA scientist claim of 'alien life' draws scrutiny

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2011 (AFP) - A NASA scientist’s claim that he found tiny fossils of alien life in the remnants of a meteorite has stirred both excitement and skepticism, and is being closely reviewed by 100 experts.

Richard Hoover’s paper, along with pictures of the microscopic earthworm-like creatures, were published late Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology, which is available free online.

Hoover sliced open fragments of several types of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, which can contain relatively high levels of water and organic materials, and looked inside with a powerful microscope.

He found bacteria-like creatures that he calls "indigenous fossils," which he believes originated beyond Earth and were not introduced here after the meteorites landed.

"He concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies," said the study.

"The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."

Studies that suggest alien microbes can be contained in meteorites are not new, and have drawn hefty debate over how such life could survive in space and how and where life may have originated in the universe.

The journal’s editor in chief, Rudy Schild of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian, said Hoover is a "highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA."

"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis," he said.

Those commentaries will be published March 7 through March 10.

A NASA-funded study in December suggested that a previously unknown form of bacterium had been found deep in a California lake that could thrive on arsenic, adding a new element to what scientists have long considered the six building blocks of life.

That study drew plenty of criticism, particularly after NASA touted the announcement as evidence of extraterrestrial life. Scientists are currently attempting to replicate those findings.

The poisonous chemical formaldehyde may have helped create the organic compounds present in the universe that gave rise to life, new research suggests.

Formaldehyde, which is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, is a common molecule found throughout the solar system. It's also famous on Earth for its use in embalming and preserving biological specimens.

Organic molecules, which contain carbon, are found in solid form in both comets and asteroids. Scientists have long wondered how these materials, which are the building blocks for all life on Earth, were created. Now researchers say they were likely made from formaldehyde in the primitive solar system. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

"We may owe our existence on this planet to interstellar formaldehyde," said researcher George Cody of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., in a statement. "And what's ironic about it is that formaldehyde is poisonous to life on Earth."

Cody and his collaborators, Conel Alexander and Larry Nittler of Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, studied carbon-containing meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites for clues about where their organic compounds originated.

To test the idea that formaldehyde played a role, the scientists came up with a chemical reaction process that could create these compounds using formaldehyde as an initial ingredient. They then let that reaction run in the lab, and analyzed the results.

The lab-created organic compounds bore striking similarities to those found in the carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, as well as to the organics in other primitive solar system material, such as samples collected from the comet 81P/Wild 2 from NASA's Stardust mission, as well as in interplanetary dust particles that likely originated from comets and asteroids.

Since this chemical reaction could have occurred naturally, based on what scientists know of the early solar system, it seems like a good bet that it produced many of the initial organic compounds in our nearby cosmos, the researchers said.

"Establishing the likely origin of the principal source of organic carbon in primitive solar system bodies is extremely satisfying," Cody said.

The research is reported online April 4 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nasa admits Roswell Crash and produced a FBI document dated March 29, 1950.

Why are they doing this. What are they doing by releasing this info after sixty years. BTW why all the alien movies and other BS. I hope we are not about to be lied to again about visitors from another planet. The Gov has technology so far in advance that it would be hard to tell which is the truth! We also have holographic tech so anything can be viewed in our sky.

Nasa admits Roswell Crash and produced a FBI document dated March 29, 1950.

Why are they doing this. What are they doing by releasing this info after sixty years. BTW why all the alien movies and other BS. I hope we are not about to be lied to again about visitors from another planet. The Gov has technology so far in advance that it would be hard to tell which is the truth! We also have holographic tech so anything can be viewed in our sky.

as much as i would love to think they found something, if you READ the PDF file, its just a report of " He said " not that the FBI FOUND

Nasa admits Roswell Crash and produced a FBI document dated March 29, 1950.

Why are they doing this. What are they doing by releasing this info after sixty years. BTW why all the alien movies and other BS. I hope we are not about to be lied to again about visitors from another planet. The Gov has technology so far in advance that it would be hard to tell which is the truth! We also have holographic tech so anything can be viewed in our sky.

as much as i would love to think they found something, if you READ the PDF file, its just a report of " He said " not that the FBI FOUND

Astronomers have discovered a whole new class of alien planet: a vast population of Jupiter-mass worlds that float through space without any discernible host star, a new study finds.

While some of these exoplanets could potentially be orbiting a star from very far away, the majority of them most likely have no parent star at all, scientists say.

And these strange worlds aren't mere statistical anomalies. They likely outnumber "normal" alien planets with obvious parent stars by at least 50 percent, and they're nearly twice as common in our galaxy as main-sequence stars, according to the new study. [Photos: The Strangest Alien Planets]

Astronomers have long predicted the existence of free-flying "rogue alien planets." But their apparent huge numbers may surprise many researchers, and could force some to rethink how the planets came to be.

"Previous observations of bound planets tell us only about planets which are surviving in orbits now," said study lead author Takahiro Sumi, of Osaka University in Japan. "However, [these] findings inform us how many planets have formed and scattered out."

Alien worlds under gravitational lens

Sumi and his colleagues made the find using a method called gravitational microlensing, which watches what happens when a massive object passes in front of a star from our perspective on Earth. The nearby object bends and magnifies the light from the distant star, acting like a lens.

This produces a "light curve" — a brightening and fading of the faraway star's light over time — whose characteristics tell astronomers a lot about the foreground object's size. In many cases, this nearby body is a star; if it has any orbiting planets, these can generate secondary light curves, alerting researchers to their presence.

Before the current study, astronomers had used the gravitational microlensing technique to discover a dozen or so of the nearly 550 known alien planets. (NASA's Kepler mission has detected 1,235 candidate planets by a different method, but they still need to be confirmed by follow-up observations.)

Sumi and his team looked at two years' worth of data from a telescope in New Zealand, which was monitoring 50 million Milky Way stars for microlensing events. They identified 474 such events, including 10 that lasted less than two days.

The short duration of these 10 events indicated that the foreground object in each case was not a star but a planet roughly the mass of Jupiter. And the signals from their parent stars were nowhere to be found.

Independent observations from a telescope in Chile backed up the finds. Either these 10 planets orbit very far from their host stars — more than 10 times the Earth-sun distance — or they have no host stars at all, researchers said. [Infographic: A Sky Full of Alien Planets]

Common throughout the galaxy

Gravitational microlensing events are rare, because they require the precise alignment of a background star, a massive foreground object and Earth. So the discovery of 10 short-duration events in two years suggests a huge population of these unbound or distantly orbiting Jupiter-mass exoplanets throughout the galaxy, researchers said.

Sumi and his team calculated, in fact, that these planets are probably almost twice as common in our own Milky Way as main-sequence stars. And they likely outnumber "normal" planets with known host stars by more than 50 percent.

Other studies have established that it's probably pretty rare for huge planets to orbit more than 10 Earth-sun distances from a parent star. So the research team argues that most of the Jupiter-mass planets — at least 75 percent of them — are likely true "rogues," floating through space unbound to a star.

Theory predicts that such rogues should exist throughout the galaxy, and other researchers have found evidence of unbound objects that may indeed be orphan planets. But those worlds were much bigger, from three to 10 times Jupiter's mass, and there's a lot of uncertainty in the measurements.

Many of the previously detected objects could actually be "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, Sumi said.

Sumi and his colleagues report their results in the May 19 issue of the journal Nature.

Rethinking planetary formation theories

The newly discovered rogue planets may have formed close to a host star, then been ejected from their solar systems by the gravitational influence of a huge neighbor planet, researchers said. Indeed, such planet-planet interactions are thought to be responsible for the odd, extremely close-in orbits of the giant alien planets known as "hot Jupiters."

But the abundance of the seemingly starless worlds may force astronomers to rethink some of their ideas about planet formation, according to Sumi.

In the core accretion model, dust coalesces to form a solid core, which later accretes gas around it, creating a planet. The gravitational instability model invokes the rapid collapse of gas, with a core forming later due to sedimentation.

The new study should inspire much follow-up research. One of the next steps could involve training more instruments on the microlensing alien planets, further monitoring them for any signs of a parent star. Such work, which may take years, could eventually reveal how many of these worlds actually do have parent stars, and how many are true rogues.

"The implications of this discovery are profound," astronomer Joachim Wambsganss, of Heidelberg University, wrote in an accompanying essay in the journal Nature. "We have a first glimpse of a new population of planetary-mass objects in our galaxy. Now we need to explore their proper­ties, distribution, dynamic states and history."

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

The galaxy is getting messy: astronomers have found planets that meander around space without neatly orbiting a star. This contradicts everything we learned in our 8th grade science class. Nevertheless, The New York Times reports that scientists have noted at least 10 Jupiter-sized planets (that's the big one pictured above) roaming around the Milky Way that may not be constrained by an orbit. Their hunch is that billions more are out there.

The research, originally reported in the academic journal Nature, points out that the planets "have no host stars that can be detected within about ten astronomical units by gravitational microlensing." The Times translates this statement by observing that astronomers aren't sure if "planets in question are in fact floating free or just far from their stars."

The existence of what've been deemed "free-floaters" may give credence to the idea the planets are thrown out of their neat orbit during formation. The Associated Press writes:

Scientists believe planets are formed when disks of dust that orbit stars form clumps, so that these clumps - the planets - remain in orbit. Maybe the newfound objects started out that way, but then got tossed out of orbit or into distant orbits by the gravitational tugs of larger planets, the researchers suggest.

So there's a giant, galaxy-wide, gravitational tug-of-war acting on these floating rocks. And one of those planets that does orbit a star, but is not Earth, has recently been flagged as possibly Earth-like enough to host life.

NEW YORK – Are these planets without orbits? Astronomers have found 10 potential planets as massive as Jupiter wandering through a slice of the Milky Way galaxy, following either very wide orbits or no orbit at all. And scientists think they are more common than the stars.

These mysterious bodies, apparently gaseous balls like the largest planets in our solar system, may help scientists understand how planets form.

"They're finding evidence for a lot of pretty big planets," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who wasn't involved in the research.

If they orbit stars, their sheer number suggests every star in the galaxy has one or two of them, "which is astounding" because that's five or 10 times the number of stars scientists had thought harbored such gas-giant planets, he said.

And if instead they are wandering free, that "would be really stunning" because it's hard to explain how they formed, he said.

If that's the case, it would give a boost to some theories that say planets can be thrown out of orbit during formation, said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, another outside expert.

Other scientists have reported free-wandering objects in star-forming regions of the cosmos, but the newfound objects appear to be different, said one author of the new study, physicist David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame.

Bennett and colleagues from Japan, New Zealand and elsewhere report the finding in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. They didn't observe the objects directly. Instead, they used the fact that massive objects bend the light of distant stars with their gravity, just as a lens does. So they looked extensively for such "microlensing" events.

They found 10, each caused by one of the newfound objects. They calculated each object has about the mass of Jupiter, and estimated how common such objects are. They also found no sign of a star near these bodies, at least not within 10 times the distance from Earth to the sun. (For comparison, within our solar system that would basically rule out an orbit closer than Saturn's.)

So the newfound objects either orbit a star more distant than that, or they don't orbit a star at all, the researchers concluded. They drew on other data to determine most of the objects don't orbit a star.

Scientists believe planets are formed when disks of dust that orbit stars form clumps, so that these clumps — the planets — remain in orbit. Maybe the newfound objects started out that way, but then got tossed out of orbit or into distant orbits by the gravitational tugs of larger planets, the researchers suggest.

The work suggests that such a tossing-out process is quite common, Bennett said.

Boss said maybe the bodies formed around a pair of stars instead, one of which supplied the gravitational tug. But even that would take some explaining to produce an object without an orbit, he said. Or maybe they somehow formed outside of any orbit. So the theoretical challenge in explaining the existence of such bodies is "exciting," he said.

Boss said he suspects most of these are in a distant orbit, and that maybe they even formed at that great distance rather than being tossed outward from a closer orbit.

Kaltenegger also said the new results can't rule out the possibility that these possible planets are in orbit, and that they may only have the mass of Saturn, about a third of Jupiter's.

But if they aren't orbiting a star, she noted, they don't fit the official definition of a planet — at least not the definition applied to objects in our own solar system.

All in all, Boss said, the new work is "pretty exciting in telling what is out there in the night sky... Lots of theories will grow in this environment."

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum will host a news conference at 10 a.m. EDT, Friday, July 22 to announce the selected landing site for the agency's latest Mars rover. NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage of the event that will be held at the museum's Moving Beyond Earth Gallery. In addition, the event will be carried live on Ustream, with a live chat available, at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

The Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, will land on the surface of Mars in August 2012. Curiosity is being assembled and readied for a November launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover.

The rover will study whether the landing region had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life existed.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission with the aim to land and operate a rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars.[9][10] The MSL is scheduled to launch between November 25 and December 18, 2011 and to land on Mars at Gale Crater between August 6 and August 20, 2012.[1][6][7][8][11] It will try to perform the first-ever precision landing on Mars. The Curiosity rover will help assess Mars' habitability, that is, whether Mars is, or ever was an environment able to support microbial life. It will also analyze samples scooped up from the soil and drilled powders from rocks.[12]

The Curiosity rover will be more than five times as massive, and carry more than ten times the mass of scientific instruments as the rovers Spirit or Opportunity.[13] The MSL Curiosity rover will be launched by an Atlas V 541 rocket and will be expected to operate for at least 1 Martian year (668 Martian sols/686 Earth days) as it explores with greater range than any previous Mars rover.

Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of Mars, and is a project managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology for NASA. The total cost of the MSL project is about US$2.3 billion.[14]

Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation

This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012. A shorter 4-minute version of this animation, with narration, is also available on our youtube page.